by TL Dyer
Jaffa makes cups of tea for the couple and we stay a short while longer until we’re sure they’re at ease with each other once more. By the time we leave the room, with a leery glare and a hissed Two-faced bastards from Ross Kemp the budgie, Paddy’s holding Cath’s hand while she talks about the meal she’s still going to cook for him.
Outside on the pavement, we walk back to the car in silence. The night is cool, the air fresh, and I blow out a heavy breath, my shoulders releasing tension I hadn’t realised was there. It was stuffy in their house tonight. Suffocating. The smell of houseplants and cheap talcum powder, the bird with its high-pitched squawk, the two of them and their problems and somehow less complex yet more complicated lives. Nothing I haven’t noticed all the other times I’ve visited before, but tonight the walls seemed to close in around me, their troubles form a choke hold on my throat. And it’s one that’s still there hours later when we return to the station to book off.
‘You look like you could do with a holiday,’ my partner says before we get out of the car. For Jaffa, that’s going out on a limb. He rarely engages in anything approaching the personal, so I can only assume that what he sees in me is bad.
‘A holiday?’ I say, with a smile it takes everything I have to muster. ‘Mate, right now I could do with an emigration.’
He nods like it’s something he’s thought about too, and the two of us cross the car park like a pair of worn-out, jaded coppers who’ve been put through the wringer one too many times. Which, in essence, is what we are. But later, when I’m driving home, I’m thinking maybe disappearing to another continent is not really necessary. Maybe Scotland would be enough.
Chapter 21
The policeman is the idiot. He’s the one with the tall hat waving a truncheon, trying to restore law and order and bleating nonsense in a deep baritone while the bad guys snigger as they run in circles around him. The criminals have the upper hand. The copper is just a joke.
Jake certainly thinks so. He roars with laughter at the cartoon animation he’s found on some Saturday morning TV show. Legs curled up on the sofa, head against the cushion, he clutches his stomach through his pyjamas as the hapless cop mistakenly hits himself with his own truncheon and then, not having learned the first time, does it again.
‘Are you getting changed today, sport?’ I say over a yawn, as the cartoon ends with the cheeky criminals skipping off over the horizon and the confused coppers locked in their own cells.
‘Now in a minute,’ he answers, not taking his eyes from the TV.
‘Now in a minute?’ I repeat, wondering who he picked that up from. Dad probably. He’s full of Welsh tics and quirky sayings. Some of my colleagues might say the same about me, being as most of them are townies and I’m one of only a few from the valleys on the team. I still get ribbed occasionally for my ‘backward’ terminology, and the sheep jokes are never too far away, but I give as good back. They can be awfully sensitive if you challenge them on the English bent in their accents.
Another cartoon begins and Jake sinks deeper into the sofa cushion, hitching his legs up and crossing one over the other. I’ve promised to take him swimming later, before he goes to Dad’s again. The set of night shifts ended yesterday morning and tomorrow I’ll be straight into early starts, which only gives us today to do something together.
‘Five more minutes, mate,’ I say, getting up to gather together our swim kits. We have a window of about two hours, give or take, between the morning’s swim classes and the late afternoon teenage rampage. But I only get as far as the stairs when someone knocks on the door.
‘Mam, door,’ Jake calls from the sofa.
‘Yeah, thanks for that, son,’ I mutter. Then louder so he’ll hear: ‘Got it.’
It’ll be the Saturday morning God squad, or some campaigner for the impending local party elections, or else Shaun. He’s forever coming over without his key. I should tie it around his neck with a piece of string. I pull open the door, prepared to tackle any one of these outcomes but not the one I’m met with.
‘Morning. Are you going to ask me in?’ Darren Isaacs asks.
He looks different, younger, and it takes me a moment to realise it’s because he’s shaved the stubble off. He’s dressed in a pair of dark denims and a black and gold Feeder t-shirt, which is the other thing that’s different about him. It’s not his t-shirt, it’s Craig’s. I remember seeing it in his box of things the other day, things that I couldn’t bear to look at and from which, in the end, I came away with nothing, preferring the memories in my head to the physical reminders from that house. If I were to step back as far as the kitchen and squint, I could be looking at Craig in another twenty years.
‘We were about to go out,’ I say from somewhere. My voice sounds stoned, because my brain’s just made a connection I’m trying not to grasp. Of that night in the car. Why I really kissed him. Who I’d wished he was.
‘It won’t take a minute,’ Darren says, his smile wide and eyes shining. He hides something in his hand behind his back.
‘I thought we agreed to wait.’ I drop my voice, the door handle still gripped in my fist.
‘To tell him, yes. Or at least, you proposed waiting and I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt. But it doesn’t hurt for him to get familiar with seeing me. In fact, it could help make it easier for him to accept. I’m doing you a favour, Sacha.’
He has a point. Not one that stops my heart from drumming in my rib cage, or the blood draining from my face. But all the same, he might be right. I just wish I’d had more warning.
‘I promise I won’t be more than a few minutes,’ he adds. And whatever has him this excited is clearly getting the better of him. ‘Why don’t you trust me on this one, Sacha?’
His eyes are bright and, under the influence of his good mood, their colour striking. It makes it hard to look away. And also hard to let him down yet again. I started this, now I have to go through with it. It’s only fair. I can’t keep expecting him to jump through my hoops. Much as I wish he would.
I move aside and he steps in, closing the front door behind him. And I’ve barely got my story straight in my head, when a little face appears in the doorway beside us. Darren follows my gaze. The moment he sets eyes on his son, his chest rises in a silent gasp, his mouth opens but the words are temporarily lost. I wonder who he sees. Himself? Or his other boy?
His paralysis is fleeting and soon passes, but his eyes never leave Jake. ‘Hello there. So you’re the man of the house.’
Not recognising this stranger in his home, Jake clings to the door, half in and half out of the living room, his chin against the wood, curious blue gaze passing from Darren to me and back again.
‘I’m a friend of your mother’s. She’s told me all about you. I’ve been so looking forward to meeting you.’
Jake’s finger goes to his mouth, his knuckle grinding into his bottom lip, meaning he’s thinking about something. ‘Was it you got me the Lego car for my birthday?’ he asks, and Darren softly laughs.
‘I did. What did you think of it?’
Jake’s caution has him looking at me again. And even when I smile to put him at ease, he’s still reluctant to answer the question.
‘Why don’t you get it, Jake?’ I suggest, nodding so he knows it’s okay. ‘Darren would love to see what it looks like.’
‘Surely it’s not done already. There’s no way you could have built that so soon. It would take an entire year, at least.’
Stepping away from the door, Jake smiles before he disappears inside the room. He returns with the yellow and white Audi Quatro Sport balanced on his hands, which he holds up for Darren to see.
‘Oh my goodness, you must be some kind of child genius. Or the youngest mechanic I’ve ever known.’
Tucking the item he’s brought, which I see now is a DVD, into the back of his jeans, he takes hold of the car and makes all the right noises that make my son fidget with pride and delight.
‘Uncle Shaun did some, but I did m
ost,’ he says, one bare foot curling over the other, his fingers twirling the bottom of his pyjama top. His tongue shoots out to dig at the corner of his mouth, the only giveaway to his little white lie, but Darren won’t know that. There’s lots he won’t know.
‘All the same,’ Darren says, lifting the car to his eyeline to look through the windows at the interior. ‘That’s quite some feat of engineering for a man of your age.’
Jake looks at me when he giggles, sharing his amusement at Darren’s use of the word ‘man’ to describe him.
‘Upstairs to get changed, buddy,’ I say. ‘We’ll need to leave soon.’
‘Already?’ he whines.
‘Yes, already. Or we’ll miss our slot.’
‘Heading somewhere nice?’ Darren asks.
‘The pool,’ Jake shouts, excitement propelling his legs up the stairs, his feet pounding every step like a child twice his age and size.
Darren watches him go, then turns to me with the same shine in his eyes he had when I opened the door. It’s as if all this has returned him to life, given him hope. That should make me feel glad. Instead, it feels like a responsibility that’s far weightier than I can bear.
‘Oh, I’ve got this for him.’ He takes the DVD from his waistband and holds it out. I recognise Craig’s copy of The Goonies, the same worn sticker on the front.
‘It might be too old for him,’ I say, but he brushes off my concerns.
‘It’s a kids’ film. He’ll think it’s hilarious.’
I go through to the kitchen and slip the DVD into a drawer. I’ll need to check if there’s blood in it before I let him watch it. Darren follows. And while I search in the laundry basket for some clean towels for our swim session, he says, ‘He looks like me. Don’t you think?’
What I think is that Dad or Shaun could walk in through the door at any minute and I’m going to have a hard time explaining what Darren Isaacs is doing pulling out a chair to sit at my kitchen table.
‘You should have said you were coming.’
‘So you could fob me off again?’ he says, but light-heartedly, as if nothing I say can spoil his mood today.
‘I haven’t been fobbing you off. I was the one who came to you, remember? I’ve explained the situation.’
‘God, I can’t believe how much he’s like me, though. The photograph didn’t do that justice. You were right, we really didn’t need that DNA test, did we?’
He runs a hand over his mouth, his eyes damp and glistening, and I’m once again seeing a side to Darren I’ve never seen before. Maybe it’s because I’m older, an adult myself now, or maybe it’s the things that have happened to him in the last few years, the family he’s lost, but it’s as if he’s gained an emotional depth I didn’t know he had in him. Sometimes I used to wonder if he was on the spectrum, same as Shaun. But the pair of them couldn’t be more different if they tried.
I fill the kettle at the sink and switch it on, making two coffees that I take over to the table. If he’s trying to make this work, it’s only right I should too. While Jake dawdles upstairs, we chat about things people normally do. Our jobs, the state of the weather, the price of a weekly shop these days. I tell him he should do something about the latter, being a supermarket manager, and he snorts with a heavy dose of cynicism, tells me he’s just the puppet not the puppet-master. Something about that saddens me. Because the master of his domain was exactly how I had thought of him back when I was a teenager.
A front, was what Shaun had said, with people like that it usually is. People like what? What kind of people were the Isaacs’ really, if not a family trying to hold it together and do the best they could with what they had, same as any of us?
‘See? This is okay,’ Darren says, once he’s drained the last of the coffee from his cup. ‘Me coming round to see my son, get him used to having me around. Oh, here…’
He delves into his pocket to pull out his phone. When he finds what he wants to show me, he passes it over the table. It’s a photo of the bedroom. Craig’s room.
‘That’s right, isn’t it? You said Hot Wheels. He just needs to fill it with some of his things now, his toys and clothes.’
Jake’s favourite cars are on the curtains hanging at the windows and over the duvet on the bed. There’s a chest of drawers against the wall that wasn’t there last week, and even a car rug on the floor – all the things I’ve been meaning to change about his room upstairs which is still in his Disney Cars phase of a few years ago.
‘He’ll love it,’ I say, the words struggling to make it out through my throat. But it’s the truth, he really would love it. ‘But listen, we should get going soon.’ I pass the phone back to him.
‘Of course.’ He gets up from the table and takes the mug to the sink, thanking me for the coffee and asking if he can say goodbye before he leaves.
‘I’ll call him,’ I say. But before we reach the hallway, I add, ‘Darren, I would prefer it if you could text me before you come here. So we can at least do this at an appropriate time. I mean, I’m not always here, for one thing.’
‘That’s right, your work. The shifts must be problematic. You’ll need more help when your father moves to Scotland. I’m assuming your brother won’t wish to take on the parenting duties.’
Above us, Jake’s feet thumping over the floorboards as he runs from one room to another and then into the bathroom slamming the door, is in rhythm with the quickening of the pulse in my chest and head. Always my first thought is to jump on the defence, but I remind myself that Darren’s only stating the obvious. And he’s right.
‘Actually Shaun is wonderful with Jake—’
‘I’m sure he is, but our son needs both of his parents, now more than ever. I’ve made it more than clear that I’m ready to bear my responsibilities. We’ll sort the arrangements between us. When you’re at work, Jake will come to mine. Which reminds me…’
He reaches into his back pocket for a slip of card that he passes to me. On it in black cursive script is a name I don’t recognise, followed by a series of letters and an address in Cardiff’s St Mary Street.
‘That’s my solicitor. He’s handling all the paperwork.’
‘Paperwork?’
‘The legal stuff.’ He swipes his hand in the air. ‘He might need to speak to you at some point to confirm a few things, so it would be useful for you to have his details.’
‘I don’t follow,’ I say, as the water rushing through the pipes over my head informs me Jake has flushed the toilet and will be down here at any second. ‘What legal stuff? In connection to what?’
Darren laughs dryly as if I’m teasing. Then realises I’m not. ‘In connection to our son, of course. He’ll be named on my will, for one, for what it’s worth. And I’ll need my name put on his birth certificate. I’m assuming you didn’t already do that. I’ve completed the relevant form and my solicitor’s sending yours in the post. So you don’t have to do anything apart from return it to the registry office with the required documents. But then there’s also custody. Sooner or later we’ll be making those arrangements, and should we struggle to come to an agreement, we’ll have already made a head start and can avoid any unnecessary delays. I think we’ve had enough of those, wouldn’t you say? Oh, here he comes. I’ll say goodbye, then let myself out.’
My feet are rooted to the spot, my mouth dry and head empty of words or cohesive thought. I hear Darren high-five my son, his son, and tell him he’ll see him again soon. I hear the hinge on the front door that squeals when it’s opened and the click of the latch when it closes. I watch Jake, in his joggers and the oversized Ferrari hoodie Dad bought him for Christmas, come into the kitchen and ask where his trunks are. And when I call him to me and squeeze him tight enough that he complains, I feel a chill that starts in my very centre and runs down my arms and legs. Someone’s just walked over my grave again.
Chapter 22
I feel sick. I had to stop the car once on the way over because I thought I was about to lose my stomach.
The sergeant asked me if I was alright and I lied and said the milk I had with my breakfast was off. The truth is, I don’t want to do this. In fact, I’ve never in my entire short career not wanted to attend a job as much as I don’t want to attend this one.
I’ve only been to my colleague Neil Smith’s house in St Julians, on the outskirts of Newport, on one other occasion. That was just a few months ago, and it was to drop him home at the end of a shift because his car wouldn’t start and recovery couldn’t get there for hours. I didn’t expect to be returning so soon. Or that I’d be coming to caution him and bring him in for questioning.
We’d all known something was wrong. The atmosphere in the station the moment we clocked on was uneasy, almost oppressive. A round table meeting of senior staff members was taking place, during which the inspector called Dalston in half an hour before its conclusion. And when our sergeant re-emerged, pale and hesitant, the already delayed morning briefing took on a whole other agenda none of us could have predicted. An allegation of rape and assault had been made against one of our own. The sarge warned against speculation, insisting we keep level heads, maintain confidentiality, and carry out our duties as we normally would. He made all the right noises, the kind that will make him a decent inspector when that role opens up for him, but for all that, there was a sense he was going through the motions, and was just as stunned as the rest of us.
There had been some debate with officers from Cardiff Central, in whose district the alleged crime occurred, as to how this should proceed. And after some back and forth, they agreed that, as a charge wasn’t a given, and to keep things under wraps, members of his own team would accompany him to the station for questioning by senior staff from both districts within SEWP. Dalston, for some reason it wasn’t my place to question or argue, chose me to go with him, under strict instructions that we tell Smithy only enough to get him in the car and to the interview room. That wouldn’t be a problem – I knew very little; and that was already more than I cared to know.
